Speaking at a seminar entitled "Future Energy Scenarios towards Sustainable Policies and Practices in Thailand", Anon said it was time the country had a national agenda for energy consumption.

The agencies involved, such as the Energy, Transport and Industry Ministries and the National Economic and Social Development Board, should mobilise ideas to steer efficient energy consumption over the next 10 to 20 years.

At present, the mass transit agencies, the transport sector and the industrial sector all looked at energy consumption separately and came up with dissimilar plans.

He said that PTT could only support an efficient energy supply in the short and medium term. Consumption in the long term required a national agenda with cooperation from every related agency. PTT could only act as a catalyst for cooperation, he said.

The World Bank's country director in Bangkok, Ian Porter, said there were tremendous gains to be made from improving energy efficiency, even though they should accompany, and not replace, changes in the country's energy mix.

"Let us look at the issue of energy intensity, which expresses changes in energy consumption in relation to changes in a country's GDP. In the case of Thailand, the relationship between its energy intensity and its GDP - known as 'energy elasticity' - has risen gradually since the early 1980s to the relatively high level of 1.4 to 1. In other words, each one-per-cent increase in GDP causes an increase of 1.4 per cent in energy consumption," he said.

Porter said Thailand's target should be to make this ratio 1:1.

"The important question is how [to achieve that], in terms of behaviour, regulation, and technology adoption, along all the links in the energy chain. What steps will encourage changes in supply-side and demand-side management? What energy mix will be most appropriate?" he said.

Watcharapong Thongrung

 The Nation